..... of an affliction so severe that it significantly restricts a person’s ability to function fully, a crater in the mind so deep that no one can responsibly suggest it would surely go away if those victims would just square their shoulders and think more positively.....
Jeffrey R. Holland

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

It Started Slowly

When I started feeling bad, I had no idea what was happening, except I didn’t feel good. I wasn’t sick, I just felt bad. When asked what was wrong, it was simply, I don’t feel good. I just felt bad. I didn’t lose any work, or stop participatingin things, I just didn’t feel good.It’s hard to go to the doctor and just say; I’m not feeling well!I couldn’t describe where I wasn’t feeling well, but just that I wasn’t. So how could I go to the Doctor?

As it got worse, don’t make me explain what worse is, it was just worse. It became more and more important that I find a way to describe the way I felt. I knew I was beginning to act different. I might even ask someone if they could help describe how I felt. I needed to be able to describe how I felt and why I was acting different. I began to spend a lot of time looking for words. Worse got worse, It seemed I couldn’t make my mind work properly. As I tried desperately to find words, it seemed that my mind would just stop, seize up, and I couldn’t make it work.

I felt frightened. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Why can’t I be able to say what is wrong?

Life became increasingly difficult I thought. I didn’t feel good about my self; I lost interest in so many things. I was exhausted all the time. Had I brought this on myself?

Had I done something that would cause this to happen? I thought I knew that Heavenly Father didn’t work that way, but was I being punished?

There were things that I was involved with. I couldn’t do them anymore. When I announced that I needed to quit, and because he was a caring person, asked if he could help in any way? The conversation went something like this.

(me)“I didn’t feel good!”

(him) “Well, tell me about it? Maybe I can help.”

(me)“I just can’t do it, I’m so tired, and I don’t feel good.”

(him) ”Well, we all get down once in a while, it even happens to me. But I’m able to pull myself out of it after awhile. It just takes some will power.

That really only happened once, but it was devastating. I couldn’t even do what I had been asked to do. And now it was my fault, I didn’t have the will power to pick myself up, and get on with life.

"In the early stages he begins to feel physically ill, and as the days pass his mental self-grooming decreases. At the start his optimism prevails. 'I feel ill now and unable to cope, but tomorrow I'll feel better.' When tomorrow arrives, however, and he feels slightly worse, he learns that the optimism of the previous day was unjustified. This gradual unlearning of optimism continues on for hundreds, even thousands of days, all optimistic thought abolished — for the patient has learned (correctly) that the future holds nothing but terrible suffering. Mental self-grooming has ceased and day after day a thousand and one events confirm previous pessimistic thoughts and a complete breakdown results" John Stuart Mill